Everyone's A Critic
by QoS
Summary: Drag Strip needs advice about his idea for a TV show. At least, that's what he says...


_Author's note : Just a short fluffy story to wish everyone a Happy New Year! And I hope it's a better one than the last._

 _Also, the story takes place...let's say, a couple of years ago. You'll see why._

* * *

"What do you want?" Starscream said, irritated. He'd been planning preliminary evaluations for a new superfuel prior to field-testing the formula, and the last thing he needed was some stupid little groundpounder knocking at his door.

"Just a few kliks of your time, Commander." One hand behind his back, Drag Strip shifted his weight from foot to foot. "If you're not too busy. Well, actually, I need some advice."

None of the rank-and-file asked for Starscream's advice, let alone in this respectful way, and to hear this from one of Megatron's pets was even more unusual. Though he didn't plan on handing out his valuable experience and insights just like that.

"What about?" he said. "Because I'm busy."

"I can pay." Drag Strip brought his hand into view, a cube of energon in it. "It's high-grade."

This was even stranger. Starscream took the cube, a little warily in case this was a trick, and did a quick analysis of the fumes. It smelled like high-grade. He took a tiny sip, passing that over filters and internal sensors.

No additives or contaminants, just high-grade. He was still half tempted to tell Drag Strip to frag off, but the prospect of getting even more high-grade out of him—because Starscream certainly had a lot of advice to impart, on a variety of subjects—was quite appealing. Besides, now he was curious. What did Drag Strip want so badly that he was willing to give up energon for it?

"Fine, come in." Best to make sure the Stunticon didn't outstay his welcome, so as he sat down and made himself comfortable, he added, "You've got one breem."

"Eight minutes…okay." Since Starscream hadn't asked him to take a seat, Drag Strip remained standing just inside the now-closed door. He produced a datapad from subspace and glanced down at it. "I'm writing a screenplay for a competition, and I want to win."

"This isn't about flying? Or successful leadership?"

Drag Strip looked confused. "Why would I ask you about those?"

Starscream glared at him, not that Drag Strip seemed to notice. "And this competition is some ridiculous human activity, isn't it?"

"Hey, the winning entry will be considered by a major network for their next TV series." Drag Strip's helm tilted high and a grin flashed across his face. "I don't call it ridiculous to have millions of people marveling at my skill."

"Assuming you win," Starscream pointed out. "And this is a waste of my time, because I don't watch human shows anyway, so I wouldn't know a fragging thing about them. They're all stupid and meaningless." He got up, though even before he drew himself up to his full height, he towered over Drag Strip. "So get out before I—"

"The story has Seekers in it."

After a moment, Starscream sat back down. He took a long slow swallow of his energon.

"Go on," he said.

Drag Strip's grin grew even broader somehow. "All right, so it begins with a young human woman. She's—"

"You said there'd be Seekers."

"Can you wait an astrosecond? I'm getting to it. Anyway, she's supposed to be the leader of her people, but she's been ousted by someone stronger who's in charge. So she wants to depose him, except she doesn't know how."

Starscream grumbled under his breath so Drag Strip would know his patience was limited, but he had to admit—if only to himself—that he understood what it felt like to deserve leadership, only to be forced to watch as someone far less qualified for it seized the position. He settled back into his chair.

"Now, she owns a junkyard," Drag Strip said.

"The Seekers had better show up soon."

"She gets married to a powerful man who decides to help her become her people's leader again. While he's building an army, she uncovers a lot of scrap metal in the junkyard—the remains of mechs who were defeated in a great battle a long time ago."

This sounded a little more interesting than whatever the humans were doing. "The Seekers destroyed them?"

"Primus!" Drag Strip flung his hands up. "No, the spare parts are the Seekers. What's left of them."

Starscream could hardly believe it. "This is the worst story I've ever heard."

"I haven't gotten to the good part yet. She starts piecing them together, and over the course of the first season, she manages to reassemble them into three F-15 planes."

It was common knowledge that all the Stunticons were glitched in the head, but this was crazier than anything Starscream could have imagined. He really hoped Drag Strip wasn't implying that he, Starscream, pride of the Decepticon War Academy and second-in-command of the army, had somehow ended up as rusting scrap in a junkyard. Because if that were the case, Drag Strip would be the one needing reassembly, and lots of it.

But even if Starscream wasn't one of those pathetic remnants of Seekers, the story made no sense at all, and he said so. "A single human builds an entire trine? So she's an aeronautical designer, an engineer, a structural assembler, a fuel tank mechanic, an electrician and a welder. What's her name, Devastator? Because she sounds like all the Constructicons rolled into one."

"Meanwhile," Drag Strip said, drawing out the word until it had five syllables to show he was deliberately ignoring Starscream's perceptive commentary, "her husband prepares to defeat her enemy. But then he's treacherously betrayed and stabbed in the back."

"Yes, that would be the definition of treachery," Starscream said dryly, but something else about the story began to puzzle him. It was somehow familiar, but he couldn't quite remember where he'd seen or heard it before.

"So he dies," Drag Strip said with a melodramatic flourish of his free hand. "And his army won't fight for her, so they abandon her, and all she has left are the F-15s still sitting in the junkyard."

"You mean these planes are just drones? They don't even have personality components?"

"She's not Vector Sigma. Anyway, she takes her husband's body into the junkyard and incinerates it in, I don't know, a shattering nuclear explosion. And that brings the planes to life."

That was it. Starscream nearly dropped the energon cube as he realized it.

Drag Strip went on, excitement filling his voice. "And the rest of the show will be about how she and these Seekers work together…or not, as the case may be…to retake her position of power and—

"Wait just one klik." Starscream got up. "That's the plot of the first season of _Game of Thrones_."

"Uh…" Drag Strip looked blank, as if he'd been shot with a null ray. Which was exactly what he deserved.

"You just substituted F-15s for dragon eggs!"

"Is that bad?"

Primus, was he really such a moron? "How stupid do you think your viewers are? They'll see right through it!"

"But that's all right, isn't it?" Drag Strip asked. "I mean, a lot of successful shows borrow elements from others."

"They borrow elements, yes," Starscream said, as witheringly as he could. "They don't recycle them wholesale, especially when those elements don't work outside of a particular context." Drag Strip still looked half confused and half hopeful, so Starscream made sure he understood the stupidity of the idea. "Look, the whole reason the dragons were born was because of that 'only death can pay for life' twist the writers set up earlier, and dragons are linked to the Targaryen family anyway. It all fits together. But in your story there's no good reason for the main character to own a junkyard or for the Seekers to become sentient."

Drag Strip's shoulders slumped. He looked down at his datapad and then slipped it back into subspace.

"I guess you're right," he said. The light behind his visor dimmed. "I was really looking forward to writing the aerial battles."

"Aerial battles are great." Starscream imagined the Seekers looming over their enemies like some vast, predatory birds. "You just need a better script, and I have the perfect idea for one. It's about a Seeker who's unfairly held down in the leadership of his—"

"Oh, slag, I just got a comm from Motormaster." Drag Strip caught the door's opening mechanism and turned it. "Megatron's given us an important mission, and the team desperately needs me. We'll continue this later, okay?"

He was gone in the next moment, pulling the door shut behind him. Left stranded in mid-speech, Starscream huffed, locked the door and settled down to enjoy the rest of his energon. _Continue this later, my afterburners_. He was never going to waste his time with a Stunticon again.

* * *

"Here's the recording," Drag Strip said. "He gave up the goods like whoa."

"We should listen to it before we give up anything," Thundercracker said, but Skywarp had already handed over one of the two cubes they'd agreed on, and was slotting the data chip into his forearm. He fast-forwarded to the end and began to laugh.

"Oh, this is great," he said, and relinquished the second cube. "Except you ran off at the best part! He was going to tell you all about his awesome idea for a TV show."

Drag Strip snorted. "Yeah, starring himself and himself with a special guest appearance by himself. You couldn't pay me enough to sit through that. Later!"

He turned and left with both hands full, while Thundercracker shook his helm. "Only room for one overinflated ego there." He turned back to Skywarp. "How did you guess Starscream watched that show too? He always says he's not in the least interested in anything humans do."

Skywarp grinned. "Cause after the wedding episode, he acted like his wings fell off and couldn't be reattached. And when the Red Viper got killed, I'd never seen anyone so miserably depressed, not even when I had to clean out cargo bay seven with another one of those Stunticons." He copied the recording for good measure and gave Thundercracker the chip so he could enjoy it too. "But I knew he'd never admit it if I just came out and asked him. So when do we show him we know allll about his little secret?"

Thundercracker mulled that over. "We could wait until we need to distract him from yet another plan to overthrow Megatron. Or maybe when he gets a bit too full of himself—though that would be most of the time. I'll have to think about it some more." He shrugged. "Come on, let's go flying."

"You know nothing, Starscream," Skywarp said happily, and followed him out.


End file.
